Brain Party

Posted at 12:46pm on Tuesday March 30th 2010

Brain Party is a fun, free puzzle game for all the family that's made up of 36 minigames designed to push your brain to its limits by testing memory, logic, mathematics, reaction time and more! Brain Party is split into two modes: test mode gives you five minigames in a row and adds up your brain weight to see how smart you are, and practise mode lets you play your favourite minigames as often as you want. If you do well enough, there are six extra minigames that can be unlocked as well as a new game mode designed to keep you playing and enjoying your favourite games even longer.

Brain Party is licensed under the GPLv3 and is compatible with Linux and Mac OS X - it's free to download, share and enjoy. To get started, download the source code from the link below, then extract the tarball and run "make". Have fun!

Frequently asked questions

Isn't this an iPhone game?

Yep! Brain Party is available to buy for $0.99 on the App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch, and it will continue to be there. But I'm releasing it as free software because I want everyone to enjoy the game - and any developer who wants to take the source code and modify it is most welcome. Of course, if you want to support Brain Party development or if you want to play the minigames using your fingers (it really is much nicer!), you can buy it on the App Store. The only difference between this release and the iPhone release is that the iPhone version has one extra minigame - it's not included here because it relies on the accelerometer.

Hey... I downloaded this and there's no game! Just loads of crappy source code!

It's released as source code so that you can build it yourself. You don't need to use "configure" - just run "make" to build it, then run "./brainparty" to play.

You may already have most of these installed already, but there's no harm being sure. Obviously you will also need a C++ compiler like GCC's G++.

Brain Party has been tested on 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu, Fedora and ArchLinux, so it should work fine pretty much anywhere.

How do I get those dependencies on my Mac?

I used MacPorts. It's not very friendly. Have you ever considered using Linux?

Can you make a Palm Pre port?

It's trivial to port Brain Party to Palm Pre, but I don't have a Pre around to test on so I can't be 100% sure of compatibility. Sorry!

Can you make a Windows port?

Er, probably. Making a Mac port was easy because Macs ship with GCC. Making a Windows port would take a little more work. And a Windows box.

If it's just minigames, why the heck is it 39MB?!

About 2/3rds of the download is the music; most of the rest is graphics. If you like the music, see the CREDITS file for more information.

I tried compiling it and it says I'm missing a header file - you suck!

If you've installed all the dependencies above and you're still missing a header file, please drop me an email - my address is in the README file. It's possible you have a broken installation of G++ that doesn't include the standard C++ header files, but it's hard to be sure.

When I run the game I get an error - you suck!

To be honest, OpenGL on Linux can be a bit flaky; that's what makes iPhone coding so nice! If you have managed to get other OpenGL games working just fine, then Brain Party should work too. If it doesn't, that's a bug and I'd like to fix it - please email me.

When I drag the window around, I get after images of the screen left behind - you suck!

This appears to be a problem with Compiz. Turn it off. The wobbly windows are stupid anyway.

All the games are locked by default - you suck!

New minigames are unlocked every time you run a test, so it won't take you long until you have them all. Go on - play the game the way it was meant to be played!

The nag screen when it launches is very annoying - you suck!

It goes away as soon as you complete your first test, or even if you just go to the Options menu and change any option.